Target User Interview - Busy Body/Coordinator

Background of Busy Body/Coordinator

• Tom is a leading software engineer.
• He and his wife Jane work remotely in Seattle.
• They have three beautiful children.
• Along with their neighbor's, their children are home schooled and two of their daughters take piano lessons.
• Tom’s wife, Jane, handles scheduling activities for the kids and works with the other parents to meet regularly on issues about home schooling.

These are two common situations where Tom and Jane might use a calendar for scheduling or coordinating.

Use case: Planning music lessons

Jane coordinate music lessons for one of the kids. The piano teacher has very strict schedule with a tiny amount of flexibility. Each child has one lesson each week for four weeks, followed by a recital on either Saturday or Sunday. If it's on Sunday there are actually two performances in the recital. Upon signing g up for lessons, Jane sets up a recurring appointment for four weeks every Thursday at 3PM for 1 hour. In that appointment, she includes a list of things that the kids need to bring, ie. music books. She would like to have a reminder the day before the lesson and one reminder an hour before the lesson, so she can collect the kids and drive to the teacher's house. Jane invites Tom. to this event. She also includes the reminders when sending the event so Tom is aware of what time to pick up the kids.

Use case: Dance recital

The teacher at the dance school inform Jane about the date and time for the dance recital. Jane enters the date and time into Chandler, publishes it on the web. Sends an invitation to Tom, her mother and her brother and his family. Tom can view the information when he is working from another city on the east coast and confirms through the web invitation (on Scooby) that he will be back in town for the recital. Jane's mother, brother and his family can views the invitation in their personal email, click on the link and view the event on a web calendar (Scooby).

Additional use case: Addressing the issue of extracting 'meanings' from e-mail and editing a collection.

This is an additional target user not part of the 1.0 target users

The advocate/enthusiast - who is a user who is an early adoptoer and seeks out new technology. The every day person may not want to adopt new technology (ie Chandler) and so how does this person interact with the 'Advocate/Enthusiast'? Here is another use case in which Tom is the 'Advocate/Enthusiast' and Jane who interacts with her husband.

1. User who must work with Chandler users but refuse to adopt new technology.
2. Cosmo might be able to receive e-mails with special structure, like those used to subscribe to newsgroups
3. It's possible for such a user to send such an e-mail to tell Cosmo server to create an event for a Chandler user
4. It's possible for a Chandler user to tell Cosmo that a specific e-mail sender can create events.

• Tom has bought into Chandler but the entire world is not. At some point Tom has to convince Jane that it's worth her time to use Chandler.
• Jane needs to make sure it's on Tom's calendar. Otherwise he will forget to do things like pick up the kids from the piano recital.
• Jane does not use Chandler. She sends an email to tom@cosmoserver.org. With subject line reading “New Event: Piano Recital @ 5/15/06 3:15PM”. Chandler creates a placeholder event based on this e-mail.

Piano recital

• Their oldest daughter has a few different kind of recitals
• One is from a private piano teacher who coordinates with the parents on the days of the recital.
• Twice in a school year all of her students (about 15 to 20 kids total) have piano recitals
• Jane would coordinate with the teacher in person
• Jane is usually the central coordinator.
• She will send an e-mail to Tom and other members of the family a list of days to coordinate which of the days will work for everyone for the recital.

Dance recital

• Two daughters are in the dance classes.
• There is a separate school for the dance recital.
• In this case the school picks the day of the recital. There is usually a choice of either Saturday and/or Sunday. Sometimes with the older kids there are two performances.
• There is no choice about the dates.
• Recital is informed 2-3 months in advanced
• There are at least 4 rehearsals.
• Rehearsals are on the weekend.
• There is no choice for the place and time. The school has to rent the recital hall.
• They usually give the kids a small flyer to give to the parents for a reminder
• There are dress rehearsals - where the parents are allowed to take photos. No photos are allowed at the recital.
• The initial notification goes to Jane

• Who remembers to bring stuff? - “Middle road, trying to have the kids remember to bring stuff on the their own.”
• Most of this is all in memory for Jane. Tom would stick it not the calendar and list of things he would need to bring.

• The kids are home schooled.
• There are other families around the island who’s kids are also home school
• The families try to meet regularly for support
• No one person/family drives the gatherings
• Once, maybe twice a week
• If there are more then one family who can't make it for one reason or another, then they have to reschedule.
• Let's reschedule it this week. Rescheduling problem. Tends to be done by e-mail.
• One or two people who are little more responsible about getting together. Might be people who are feeling, they need to know, and so either send other e-mails or prompt the phone calls.
• There is a standing day, and time, beginning school year boundary and people can plan the rest
• Other people can have other lessons, normal school hours free.
• Outside school hours, once they know what the pattern is, home school meeting and 3 different lessons the same day.
• Getting together and hash out the schedule.

• Small group meeting for church - there is a driver
• Runs a little more like the home school -no one person who drives the gatherings

Additional Q/A about calendar tools

Do you use alarms?

• Alarm facilities are really important. “5 minutes before that drive me crazy.”

• I use the calendar to figure out in terms of meetings and where I need to be.
• Task management. My job usually entails me to sit in on meetings and give people advice.

* Please note the names of the people have been changed.

-- PriscillaChung - 30 May 2006